We just came back from spending a week visiting Mickey in Orlando.

I've seen several cyclists there, some may have been commuting, none were in a great hurry. In the city if you want to get somewhere fast you MUST have a car.

Having never been there before I was amazed at how spread out the city is. Some streets (International Drive for one) you can drive for 5+ miles and there's absolutely NOTHING on either side, just six lanes seperated by a wide median.

Everywhere you go, there's traffic. If you need to get from A to B, chances are that there will be cars whizzing by you at 55+ and there is almost no bikelanes to be seen

Some good points - the weather You can take your sweet time getting to work on your bike because you're sure NOT to freeze

The multi lanes of traffic could also work in your favour in some cases since it gives the cars lots of other lanes to pass you in.

The fun factor - With all the medians in the city (they rule in U turns) once in a while there will be a sign "keep off median". I first thought that they just don't want frustrated motorists ripping up their lawn and possibly creating a hazard to oncoming traffic accelerating from the side of the road. I found out why the other day.

Turns out that some frustrated soul wanted to do a U turn in the wrong place. Right before the entrance to Disney. What LOOKED like solid grass apparently wasn't and his car was sideways in the middle of the median with its lights on. The problem was that the lights were just above the WATER !

Guess those medians are just more areas to hold the water which is everywhere in the area. Lesson learned the hard way for buddy who I saw was walking along the road away from his half sunk car.

The good again - NO HILLS - The highest climb is to the top of the overpass which is 15 feet above the street below. Quite the climb.

The bad - This place is amazingly spread out! I can see why someone may look at you funny when you say that you bike to work.

More bad - the traffic. Orange Blossom (IIRC) is amazingly busy. Total of six lanes.... just try to turn left out of a parking lot! I did it, but it took some time.


Overall, like the climate, the people are friendly everywhere - even at the out of the way places the tourists don't visit much. Will visit again but am sure glad to be safe (kind of) in my bike lane only being passed by traffic doing 45-50mph at the most.

You listed some of the reasons I left Florida 6 months ago having lived my whole life there (I was in the Tampabay area about 1 1/2 hours West of Orlando).

Yes, its all spread out. You mentioned the weather was nice, but that's because you got there in November. If you had been there only 1 month earlier, it still would have been sweltering hot. Yes, you don't have to worry about the cold, but the heat in the summer (which is about 8-9 months of the year) can be absolutely staggering with humidity so high its hard to breath. I hated biking in that.

No, the medians aren't all to catch water....that was probably a fluke. Disney was built on and around swamp area, so its likely due to the natural terrain there. It sure would be nicer if they made smaller medians and added bike lanes or even wide shoulders. How many bike lanes or wide shoulders did you see on the roads? Not much, I suspect. We didn't have many in Tampa area.

Another bad thing is that FL is just not a cycling friendly state. Drivers are horribly unsympathetic and ignorant of cyclists. I once saw an article that showed Tampa as the worst city in the U.S. in terms of dangerous roads for cyclists.

Anyway...enough rant. That's why I'm not in FL anymore.

Flaaariduh

Florida was much nicer 25 years ago. No one goes there any more, because it's too crowded.

1 ply. after a couple years of living there, some find the excessive Summer heat is as uncomfortable as the cold winters elsewhere. I understand my old Florida city has installed a fair amount of bike lanes, but I think that is unique for Florida.

There I fixed some things.

I don't mind hills myself. They add the third dimension you know (x, y, z)

Without hills you only have 2D

Termite - I noticed a while back that Disney was indeed built on a swamp. However now that I've seen it, I'm sure they designed the medians to hold excess water. Not much happens by chance in Disney. Its staff is the best of the best. Always smiling, helpful, friendly etc. And unlike Hollywood, their stars only get one chance to do the show right, there are no retakes, no second chances. The people that work there are either paid so well that just thinking about their next paycheque makes them smile all day or are so fearful of letting their smiles wane for a moment due to the swift punishment from Mickey.... or both.

Back to the state - Maybe it's so spread out because some parts are wetter than others, so they just build a road through the wet parts and build the houses and stores where it's 8" higher?

It could very well have been a Disney designed thing...my point was that "holding excess" water wasn't the point of medians all over the state. It was likely specific that that area.


Usually they serve little purpose. I like the fact that here (Washington State) they typically have very small medians and use the extra width to have bike lanes or wide shoulders.

I use to live in Tampa about 3 years ago. I moved to NC because of the stupid hurricanes. Orlando is built the way it is because they want to be able to expand areas when they feel it's needed. Disney is a city in itself also. Not sure if you are looking at Disney or are actually talking about Orlando. They are different, believe it or not. Disney could care less about bicyclist as probably all of the people that visit Disney are tourists and fly or drive there from long distances. Not many of their customers are traveling there by bicycle.

Tampa Bay has a lot more bike lanes now. Not sure why, but they do. I'll be there on Thanksgiving visiting the in-laws. Not bringing a bike though.

They have enough water there to fill all the medians .... the entire state seems to be built about 3 feet above water level and lower. The rainwater has nowhere to go.

Agreed. On some of the faster roads within the city here they may have a small median, which is usually accompanied by a bike lane on the far right

We actually have the city here seemingly going backwards by planning to shrink the lane through downtown in order to slow down traffic. This basically makes cars either buzz you or pass in the other lane which is always full. I sent them a note saying that since bicycles are traffic I'm free to travel down the middle (safety first) of the lane at 20kph (13mph?) for the entire length of the narrow section. Should be interesting....

How is the flooding in FLA? Do the houses and restaurants get wet carpets quite often?

You are right about the distance above sea level....actually I think you are a little on the high side. Flooding occurs, but usually only in low/recessed areas. So most people will be ok, but those who live in slight valley type areas get all the water flowing down to them.

Although, in many places, its not uncommon after a massive rain (which is quite common) to see a few feet of standing water in the road in some areas. It usually dissipates within a day or two though (assuming more rain doesn't come).

No your not going to freeze,but last week it was colder in Tallahassee then anywhere in the country

Florida perplexes me.

If any state could have been a cycling paradise it's Florida. Beaches, tons of people on vacation, lots of sunshine and for those who don't like changes in elevation- flat as a pancake.

But the road designs are dreadful. Fast powerful cars and lots of trucks hauling goods and produce on narrow straight stretches at high speed.

The regular poster from Florida who seems to deal well with it is CommuterRun. I think he hauls a boat trailer behind his bike at times and seems to negotiate the Floriday highways without much incidence.

I've ridden a lot in the West Palm Beach/Fort Peirce/Vero Beach areas and survived it fine but was challenged by adjusting to the traffic.

Doesn't Florida have a particular high rate of bicyclist deaths?

Orlando SUCKS. It is the very definition of urban sprawl. Horrible place. No reason for anyone to ever go there, IMHO. Disney et al are all prefabricated corporate representations of idealized small town America---so go on vacation to a small town somewhere. Now that my rant is over, I live in a small town on the west coast of Florida, and it's not a cycling mecca, no. Even here everything is spread out. The problem with Florida(except for St. Augustine), is it developed too late. My area didn't really start growing until 20 years ago, and that's when gas was cheap. Therefore nobody minds the grocery store being 10 miles away.

I'm fortunate in that my county benefitted from lots of impact fees due to Yankees and Yuppies building McMansions here before the bubble burst. Now we are gifted with two really nice bike trails(Suncoast Trail to the south, and Withlacoochee State Trail to the east), and MUPs and bike lanes cropping up everywhere. The downside is the bike lanes are coming with the 4 laning of the roads.

Drivers are horrible here. It's a combination of redneck natives and ancient Yankees. I grew up in rural south Louisiana, and have lived in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana---and Florida drivers are the worst. I've seen things here I've never seen anywhere----like people in the left turn lane at a light who pull WAY past the light into the intersection. Then when the light goes red for them they sneak across. ERR.

I've been run over, yelled at, chased down, had garbage thrown at me, gotten wolf whistled, called a ****, chased by pit bulls, and I keep at it. Why? Because I can ride in shorts in December. That's why. Where else am I gonna find that---California, Texas, the Southwest, or Hawaii.

Yes, the highest in the nation most years, and Key West is the most dangerous place in the state. That's likely due to drinking to a large degree. I live in FL and the roads are horrible. I'm not asking for bike lanes everywhere, but sometimes a shoulder would be nice. There's a weird law here that states a road can have a sidewalk or a shoulder, but not both. When roads have sidewalks they have curbs, so it's up on the sidewalk if you want to ride there, unless you want to rub shoulders with 60mph traffic. Even worse, the law doesn't state that there has to be a sidewalk on both sides. A major road in my county was recently made into divided 4 lane---and the sidewalk is only on one side, with a curb on the other. Therefore it's unrideable. Forgetting bicycles, what happens when a motorist breaks down? They can't get out of the lane, so they block it. Somebody's going to die.

Not much flooding because the ground (where I live anyway) is sandy. Water absorbs right through really quickly. When I lived in Louisiana the water stood for days. Here, not so much. The last flood we had was in 1991 when a storm pushed the river and bay into the town of Crystal River. Didn't last long though.

I loved that Withlacoochee trail, though it was pretty far out of the way (I lived in Clearwater last few years before I moved).

One big thing I've noticed different about the trails there and the trails here (Seattle area) is that the trails here are functional. The FL trails are nice, but probably, mostly because they are all new in trail years. The trails in this area may not "quite" be as nice, but the nice thing is that they can be used to get around places, around the towns and suburbs. The Suncoast trail and Withlacoochee trail are both essentially not near anything much worth needing to go. Just north/south paralleling a main road (Suncoast hwy or US 41)....but they don't branch out and let you get around to places.

True....there were a few spots though, which was what I was talking about...you'd see them on the news every time we got a massive amount of rain for a few days. There was that one area in Zephyrhills....another area in Clearwater, etc...

I've noticed the same thing. Florida seems to think that if they put a little bike path around a park or along a residential street they've accomodated cyclists. Almost as though it's inconceivable someone might actually want to get from point A to point B by bicycle.

Florida had it's major wave of development begin after WWII and really take off in the 50's, 60's and early 70's and that was the height of the autocentric suburban sprawl design. With higher gas prices and the longer distances people have to drive in Florida to go to the supermarket or to work- except in the much older cities in Florida there is seldom a real "town center"- it's going to get tough for Florida's economically challenged populations to get around. Florida seems destined to be a victim of the quick profit/fast growth mindset that led to poor planning for a sustainable future.

Where are you , Crimson Eclipse ??
Im A1A from Jupiter to Riviera Beach everyday.......

I have commented on the VC situation in A&S and been skewered.
People really think you can ride VC anywhere. Fl would change that
quickly. Hope their med ins. is paid up.
Yeah, FL is no Vermont, thats for sure. Its a test of all yer Kung-Fu skilz.
I still think SC is worse though, if thats possible.

Heres to Floridiots and the first flock of sno-buzzards who are
making everyone homicidally angry !

You're absolutely right about that. The trails you mention are pretty much for recreation only. There has recently been an extention to the Withlacoochee trail---it's a MUP that runs from the trail all the way up to Citrus Hills. Again, it doesn't branch out and GO anywhere. Eventually the trail will run all the way up to SR 44, which has a bike lane all the way to US 19 in Crystal River. But there's not a netwok of trails here. The mindset seems to be all about bikes as toys.

You are right, of course. I grew up in a small town in south Louisiana, and as a kid I was able to get around it by bike easily. I was able to cross what was the highway dividing the town with not much trouble. There were no bike lanes but traffic was low and everything was accessible. Not here. I can't imagine a kid trying to get around here. This area has grown up considerably in the past 10 years without a cohesive plan. It's just suburban sprawl and stores.

It's funny...I talk about how bad FL was for cycling to some of the people I've met here, and I don't think they really understand. They act like....aaaaw you were a wimp. I'd have been commuting everywhere if I were there. I've head stories of commuters getting beer bottles thrown at them from rednecks in their trucks.

You said it, meng.

Honestly though, I have a good time. And I live in the part that is the third-world country.

Re - Orlando: There's some really, really good riding to be had in Clermont (just north of Orlando). Everyone seemed very friendly (pickups included) the few times I've trained up there. But they also host the Great Floridian so they're prolly used to it.